Source of Amiga Video Toaster Software Released 394
bender writes "About a decade after the release of of the NewTek Video Toaster for the Amiga, OpenVideoToaster is now hosting the source code of the software! The Video Toaster ushered in the age of affordable desktop video in 1991 and was used in products such as Babylon 5 and Jurassic Park."
Nice code, some duplicates... (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
What's the license? (Score:5, Interesting)
Public Domain? GPL? BSD?
What are we allowed to do with it?
Cool, but is it of value ? (Score:2, Interesting)
The Video Toaster was a revolution in video (Score:5, Interesting)
Beyond that, Amigas with Newtek's Lightwave software were used in the production of series like Babylon 5 and Seaquest DSV. Huge render farms with 10^3 computers were generating graphics for major television series. You had better believe that it's significant from a historical perspective.
Today, Newtek's online editing setups are pretty interesting but vastly different. It's no skin off their backs to release the source because it's not really commercially valuable. That's because in the last couple of years editing come to the point where it is really accessible by the average person. I do technical consultation for video editors, and know for certain that the seed for desktop editing today was planted by Newtek's Video Toaster over 12 years ago.
One last note: the Amiga technology back in 1984 was being bid upon by two companies. The company that won was Commodore, and we know what a debacle of excess and poor marketing they were. The other was International Business Machines [ibm.com], who decided it wasn't valuable. Had IBM purchased the Amiga technology, it's very likely the computing landscape and development of multimedia technologies would have been a lot different and IMO advanced much further for the average person than history as it stands today shows.
Video Toaster wasn't film quality (or video...) (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:What's the license? (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, some people are saying it wasn't broadcast quality, however, a number of people disagree. When the video toaster came out, it replaced a 100K production system for 6K. It took video editing/production by storm. For example, the FOX affiliate in Anchorage used one for years. The station manager told me how it was just incredible and could do much more bang for the buck than anything out there (circa '95).
The effects, depending on how you used them, could look cool or cheesy. Think of the effects of Home Improvement, when they did the scene changed. The one I remember out of the box for the Toaster was the legs crossing on-screen for a scene change.
So, now's the real question... How easy or hard will this be to port? It looks to support other languages, as well. I noticed Kanjii support.
Is the source code Amiga specific? I know they had other systems supported, but later. Amiga source code, at least the OS specific functions, are a lot different than coding today.
Most of the apps they have source to didn't require the additional hardware that the VT came with, which is good.
Personally, I think there might be some gems, but I doubt you'll see whole ports of the applications. Too much has changed since 91.
There's a new os (OS4) and new Amiga One machine.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep you fingers crossed.
strange toaster fact (Score:5, Interesting)
Brings back memories (Score:5, Interesting)
My highschool got one of these back in 1992 or 1993 and I managed to convice them to give me THREE class periods of independent study time to shoot, write and edit our weekly "TV" show. It was a blast and it really taught me how to work under a deadline -- I was the only student doing the show and fourth period EVERY FRIDAY there had to be 15 minutes of show in the can ready to show.
At the time, it was somewhat of a jewel on our school's crown to have a weekly, entirely student-produced show. We just thought it was more fun that trig.
The last time I poked my head in my high school, they had several classes dedicated to broadcast and communications with a real teacher assigned to it and everything. They were also doing a daily show in lieu of the morning announcements over the PA system.
I feel proud I got to do it my way and learn something in the process. God bless the Toaster -- and who coudln't resist tossing in a few Kiki effects or falling sheep here and there! ;-)
Good times...
BSD??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dan East
Re:video toaster wasn't used for Jurassic Park (Score:3, Interesting)
For a while, I could "spot" when it was being used somewhere - like in low budget syndicated television shows, or in the early days of small networks, like Comedy Central.
The "problem" with it was - it was something you outgrew. That Commodore/Amiga went the way of the dodo didn't help, but really it was for small-time or hobbyist operations at best. Once your operation became big enough, you started looking elsewhere.
I should probably go back and see if my alma mater's operation is still going, and what they use today.
Re:Modern alternative? (Score:5, Interesting)
Final Cut Pro [apple.com] and Shake [apple.com].
Though at Sundance this year, an enterprising individual edited and produced a movie for $218.32, using iMovie [apple.com].
Re:All well and good, but (Score:5, Interesting)
But, if your timing is off by even a percentage, your broadcast signal falls apart, rendering dependent systems, such as the toaster, useless for their primary job of interfacing with these signals. This is analog technology here, can't use digital techniques to solve the problems.
Re:All well and good, but (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, Toaster was a hardware package with controlling software, not just a software package. You can't really port it to the PC any moreso than you can port, say, the custom software used in a flatbed scanner to a PC; you might be able to emulate the internal operation, but the hardware itself is missing.
That takes me back (Score:4, Interesting)
Comedian Dana Carvey's Brother Designed Toaster (Score:2, Interesting)
Brad is also the inspiration for Dana's portrayal of the "Garth" character in Wayne's World (on Saturday Night Live and the movies) -- you'll notice that Garth is essentially a quiet geeky guy who is really good with electronics.
No explicit license == default copyright (Score:3, Interesting)
So it is only safe to assume that the source follows normal copyrights, and you may not redistribute it in any way without permission. Until there is some announcement from NewTek that says otherwise, this is their code and only their code -- it can be used for "reference" or your personal source-code museum, but not much else.
Re:The heart of the Toaster was a custom ASIC (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:strange toaster fact (Score:3, Interesting)
Is there a ports project? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, I don't program, so this is a "gee, it would be great if someone else did this" post,. Take it with as many grains of salt as you wish.
- G
Re:Cool, but is it of value ? (Score:3, Interesting)
It will probably never happen, even though I doubt that either device contains any licensed components.
Re:All well and good, but (Score:5, Interesting)
But there must be a solution. There are generally an almost infinite number of ways of doing something in hardware, as in software. Don't know much about the Amiga, but clearly the internal clocks would need to be synchronised to the incoming video, same as in an audio application. To get 16-bit audio with no corruption, at 44.1KHz sampling, needs about 200pS maximum jitter.But, I don't see why video needs to be so precise, well under one pixel would probably be about OK, say 10nS. The eye is much more easily fooled than the ear. You barely need 8-bit DACs either (24-bit colour), 7-bit is probably adequate.
I guess the Amiga uses a PLL to synchronise everything to the incoming video. It would be hard to do that on a modern PC, you would need to butcher the motherboard to inject your own clock signal, and the crude PLL clock multiplier in the CPU would probably mess it all up again. Sometimes older technology is best.
Proper video editing cards for PCs are expensive because they have to run synchronously to the video, not the PC, amongst other things.
Still, it is good that this software has been released. I wonder if the price of used Amigas is going to rise, as everyone wants a toaster?
Re:Huh, care to explain? (Score:2, Interesting)
~/unzip/CG/src$ grep -i fuck *
NewCrawl.c:
NewCrawl.c:VOID FakeFucked(VOID)
NewFunction.c:char *DefNameFcn(void *fuck, int Entries)
NewGadgets.c: LB = BufferedOpen("hd0:fuck",MODE_NEWFILE,80,R->ByteSt
NewGadgets.c:char *NameFcn(void *fuck, int Entries)
Panel.c:char *NameFn(void *fuck, int Entries)
cgrexx.c: if(DoLoadBook(ARG1(msg),NULL) )
cgrexx.c:// if(DoLoadBook(ret,NULL) )
newrender.a: XLABEL _FuckBM
newrender.a: DUMPREG
newrender.a: DUMPMEM
~/unzip/CG/src$ grep -i pussy *
cgrexx.c: int DouchePussy=REFRESH_NONE;
cgrexx.c: return(DouchePussy);
cgrexx.c: if(IS_FUNCTION(msg)) DouchePussy=HandleCommand(msg);
cgrexx.c: return(DouchePussy);
cgrexx.c: int i,DouchePussy=REFRESH_NONE;
cgrexx.c: if(iNULLid && Handler!=NULL) DouchePussy=Handler(msg);
cgrexx.c: return(DouchePussy);
fun fun...
Awesome! (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone mentioned previously that the Amiga's custom chips provided the timing. Since UAE emulates the custom chips, is it possible to use this under UAE?
Re:"There's too much confusion"... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure that Newtek shipped a Toaster/Lightwave bundle for a number of years, so people may have used the term "Toaster" when referring to the 3D graphics the whole package produced as well.
Regarding Jurassic Park, I think Amigas running Lightwave may have been used for some rendered storyboards, but definitely not for anything you see in the film.
(Going by my memories of old Amiga magazines here...)
Switcher (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"There's too much confusion"... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think people should discount anything else in the post by rduke as he does not know anything about the toaster.
I worked on this project (in 1995) testing hard drives to see if they were fast enough.
The reason it was so popular was that the compression used did not introduce artifacts from editing. It is because the compression does not use the previous frame data as some of the others do.
Re:The Video Toaster was a revolution in video (Score:4, Interesting)
Uh, no.
The other company was Atari, headed by Jack "Business is War" Tramiel. He had just left Commodore to head up Atari, and was in negotiations with Amiga, Inc. to buy and develop their machine. In anticipation of closing the deal, Atari gave Amiga a $750K "advance", to be repaid if negotiations fell through.
Well, Tramiel is a soundrel of the first rank, and used this "advance" as a lever against Amiga to try and buy the company cheap. Meanwhile, Dave Morris was also negotiating the sale of Amiga to Commodore, and managed to secure a better deal. (Commodore were also interested in annoying Tramiel.) After closing the deal, he flew back to California and, to their utter shock, repaid Atari.
Tramiel was furious, and ordered his people to develop a competing machine. Thus was born the Atari 520XL, which was significantly cheaper, had a slightly faster CPU, no graphics accaleration, marginal sound, and a crap operating system. He positioned it directly against the Amiga and ran "attack" ads against it.
Someone should write a book about this...
Schwab
Re:Nice code, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
I was still running Lightwave on a Toaster up until 1996.
The Pre-iMovie Video Solution (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sure there are people really adept at Toaster, but it just seems like most of the sh*t you can now do on iMovie in just a fraction of the time.
If I'm wrong, please give me some insight...
the magnificent Flyer... (Score:2, Interesting)
Basically the flyer could reproduce two videos at the same time, from two hard drives, and a third hard drive was used for sound, it used the toaster as a switcher, so it did not need to render de effects, they were ral time, so it was very fast, even for today standards.
I made a living, editing on the flyer, from corporate videos, to TV comercials, we never get a complain about the quality.
I miss the interface a lot, i could edit faster on a flyer, than on a modern Avid system.
specially, i loved the arexx scripts to automate editing chores.
For example, with one script, i just put the music track, and the script would automatically put fade in, put volumen down and up, and fade out to the music. It was just a mateer of minutes to put music to a video. Today i hve to adjust each level by hand.
Another of my favorite scripts was to put video efect autmatically on my finished video. I would make a cut only edition, and then just put a soft cut in all my editions, in less thana aminute i could adjust all my efect, or chagen them glbally.
Finally, my favorite trick was used to make music videos.
First i load in the project all the video secuences i would like to use, then i load the music. Then i play the music and began to tap de rithm on the keyboard. Each tap would put a videsecuence in place. After that, a little cleaning, and voila, an instant music video. It aws wonderful and fun...
I miss all that power...
Unfortunatelly, the video signal was composite video. Today we are used to D2 quality. Altough still there are people who can,t see the diferences :)
By the way... Spielberg was a toater Fan, he used the toaster (lightwave) for storyboarding, int one of the books aopbut how jurasic park was made, we see Spielberb playing wit an open toaster...
After that photo, my chief never complained again that our toaster had almost always open... (screws are for cowards...) 8)